Medical practitioners utilize a variety of gastro-intestinal devices to access the gastro-intestinal tract. One type of gastro-intestinal device, the gastro-intestinal tube or gastrostomy tube, is widely used with patients who require catheterization for the purposes of, for example, delivering food or medication to the gastro-intestinal tract, draining the tract, or creating a surgical port.
Medical practitioners often use Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy (PEG) techniques, such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,861,334; 4,900,306; and 5,080,650, to place tubes within the gastro-intestinal tract. These techniques typically involve either placing a gastro-intestinal tube in the patient's mouth and snaking it down the esophagus, into the stomach, and out the abdominal wall, or they involve inserting a tube into the stomach from outside of the abdominal wall by sliding the tube over a guidewire.
Gastro-intestinal tubes are often equipped with internal bolsters, or anchoring devices, at one end which help prevent the tube from being prematurely or inadvertently pulled through the stoma or other tract through which it has been placed. While serving that purpose, the size, shape and rigidity of these bolsters often frustrate attempts to place tubes equipped with such bolsters using PEG techniques.
When the tube is properly placed, the internal bolster lies inside the stomach wall, and the tube shaft extends out through the abdominal wall. Thus, when using PEG placement techniques which entail snaking the tube into place, the internal bolster is dragged along with the tube through the gastro-intestinal tract, often causing tissue trauma and potential contamination of the tract. Further, internal bolsters are often too large and rigid to allow placement by threading a bolster-equipped tube through a tract over a guidewire.
The internal bolsters also make tube removal difficult. Because the bolsters are often too large and rigid to allow easy removal by, for example, traction pull from outside the stomach, tubes with internal bolsters are often removed with an endoscopic snare.